My apologies to radio engineers, IEEE  members and others of a sufficiently technical bent who might be offended by the primer about to follow.

Wireless equipment (smartphones, over-the-air TVs, WiFi access points, GPS, RFID etc) owe their existence to the good old radio and the physics of electromagnetism. With a couple of Google searches you can discover the nuances of transmitters, receivers, frequencies, amplifiers, amplitude and a host of other esoteric terms. All of these devices either transmit or receive (or both) waves across the radio spectrum. Within the radio spectrum there are slices or bands called frequencies. These radio frequencies are essentially the  specific highways over which individual radio waves travel. Frequencies have their own characteristics: for example, lower frequency radio waves can typically travel farther than higher frequency radio waves given the same amount of power.

Continue reading “Radio Frequencies, Spectrum and 5G” →